Blogger Calls for Applying Lean Principles to Integration

First there was lean manufacturing, a concept lifted from the Toyota production system playbook. It was soon followed by a slew of disciplines suddenly eager to go lean, including software development, of course.

Schmidt makes a case for applying the lean principles of trimming waste and inefficiencies and focusing on what creates value to integration. Data integration, system integration and enterprise application integration are all ripe for trimming and focusing on value, he contends. He writes:

Integration in each of these domains therefore is not just a one-time activity and instead is an ongoing activity. In summary therefore, Lean Integration is the application of Lean principles to the challenges of data integration and application integration.

He's still researching the concept, but he seems pretty sure he's the first to apply the lean concept to integration. However, he's already outlined a 10-week series of blog posts on the topic, in which he will explain what lean integration would look like, including how you'd eliminate waste, plan for change, sustain knowledge and address Dr. W. Edwards Deming's 14 points.

It's an interesting concept, and I look forward to seeing how Schmidt works out the details. You can subscribe to Informatica's Perspectives blog to get the full series, but you should know that the blog is written by several writers, so your feed will include a lot of other commentaries.

I'm also glad to see everyone hasn't forgotten about Deming in this Six Sigma world. True, Deming doesn't offer the geek-appeal of karate-esque belt levels, but I always thought his principles made a lot of sense.

Loraine I'm so glad you support this direction and hope you'll watch the series progress and add your perspective.You might be interested to learn that another article on the topic of Lean in IT was coincidentally posted on the same day - but this one on the topic of Lean Data Quality. Check out http://www.dataqualitypro.com/data-quality-home/lean-techniques-to-help-your-data-quality-improvement-initia.html?lastPage=true&postSubmitted=true - it's very interesting.John Schmidt Reply

Jan 20, 2009 9:52 AMDylan Jones
says:

John - thanks for linking to my article, appreciated, I really look forward to the rest of your series, great content so far.We've just posted another article today actually http://www.dataqualitypro.com/lean2 covering little's law, a key element of Lean.The key thing for me is making people realise that waste is a really simple route to free profit. So many businesses go looking for new business to increase revenue or new IT innovations to cut costs when the profits are ripe for the picking if they just scrapped all their bad practices that incur massive costs.There is no need for big 5 consultants or mega-investment, low-hanging fruit is all around us. Reply

Jan 23, 2009 8:37 AMGreer
says:

Using Lean manufacturing methods mixed with Kaizen to hit low hanging fruit, and extend your strategic horizon, you can get on the path to sustainability. Financial sustainability. Reply

Jun 25, 2009 3:53 AMRoulette spielen
says:

Schmidt makes a case for applying the lean principles of trimming waste and inefficiencies and focusing on what creates value to integration. Data integration, system integration and enterprise application integration are all ripe for trimming and focusing on value, he contends.he's already outlined a 10-week series of blog posts on the topic, in which he will explain what lean integration would look like, including how you'd eliminate waste, plan for change, sustain knowledge and address...